Defeat Thornbird and his Guards (Timothy Raymond) auto-failing

[ceaars]

This is one of the missions in the "Lost and Found" pseudo-arc from Timothy Raymond - a bunch of randomly ordered missions including one badge mission that have a story-arc style title in the mission descriptions, and award merits when they are all completed, but don't give a souvenir.  But that's not the bug...

 

The mission itself is Defeat Thornbird and his Guards.  It's in Primeva (well, that's the mission map - the entrance was actually pretty close to the Nerva entrance).  Once you enter, it warns you not to let Thornbird escape.  Nothing unusual so far...

 

When you approach Thornbird, he rattles off his usual text, including saying "I must get away!"  (Actually he said it before I even spotted it.)  I however did spot him - just standing doing that "I'm ready to mix it up with you fist-palm" thing.  Verify the boss' name is Thornbird.  He's a Crey Protector (even though the mission description briefing Kelly Uqua gives you says he's a Paragon Protector, not a Crey Protector).  I figure he's gonna run the moment I engage him - so I'm going to need to hope for a stun or he'll get away.

 

So I queue up Total Focus (not enough to get a stun, but the other Energy Melee attacks will probably stack enough stun on him to do the trick - I hope) and charge 'ol Thornbird down.  I get right next to him and before the attack even goes off WHAM!  I zone out.  Mission Failed.

 

(Still get the reward merits.  Timmy Ray ain't happy with me - well at least until the next mission, but other than a 'nerfed' XP reward typical of mission fail ... which I don't care about because this is my 'do all the villain missions on one character guy, so less mission reward means eventually less time spent at level 34 with XP turned off, I get normal mission rewards.)

 

I did look it up on the Wiki, and apparently when the game was live (irony of ironies) you couldn't actually *fail* this mission (apparently running into the red 'mission exit' box did not flag a mob as escaped, so Thornbird simply could never get away).  So it does look like an attempt was made to fix them - but it broke in the opposite direction.  Now he doesn't even *need* to run.  All you have to do is get near him and the mission fails right off the bat.

 

(And since somebody is sure to mention it: yes, I'm positive he wasn't near the mission exit.  And I'm positive I was looking at the right mob.  And that his 'partner' (who was a Riot Guard) didn't get away while Thornbird stayed behind, or anything like that).

[Cinnder]

I just had this happen to me, but I never even got near Thornbird to aggro him.  He was still standing in his original spot doing the fist-smack emote as I fought some other mobs who were not near enough for him to see.  Although he never moved from his spot, the mission immediately failed.

[Rudra]

If he is left alone for a while, the mission can fail as Thornbird  tries to escape. He does not always wait for you to reach him, and pretty much never does in my experience. If you bother fighting your way to him, he is pretty much guaranteed to already be running away well before you reach his spawn location. And he does not follow the water. He takes the shortest route to his escape point. I've actually found him running along the blue map edge to escape as I bee-lined in flight to where he was supposed to be. A lot of do-not-let-escape bosses do that now in that they immediately start fleeing once you are within a ridiculous range of them. Fortunately, they usually give up trying to escape if you catch them in the process of escaping and you hit them. Then they will fight to defeat. (Conversely, if you're fighting a mob that only attempts to flee after taking X damage, they will ignore everything short of a hold to escape. Even stunned bosses will stagger at full run speed to the exit.) Also, Thornbird is always flagged as having escaped if you begin combat with him and are zoned for any reason. This happens with all bosses you are supposed to keep from escaping and the game sees combat has started with them. That is not a bug. You being zoned out because you attacked however, yeah, that's a bug. So reading your post, you did not fail because you got near him, you failed because you were zoned by the game when you should not have been and like any fleeing boss, Thornbird is treated as having immediately escaped because you "fled" after initiating combat.

[Rudra]

Cinnder's circumstances however, are completely new to me.

[Six-Six]

I remember something similar with the Spymaster and Salestra. I was standing at the first crossroads from the entrance, yet both of them "slipped" past me without me seeing them. That's one helluva cloaking device.

[Shadowsleuth]

It's still happening, a few days ago I played the storyarc via flashback & the Thornbird mission auto failed. I continued with the storyarc & was awarded zero merits at storyarc completion even the other missions were successful.

 

So, I tried the flashback storyarc again now, & again the Thornbird mission auto failed even though he never left his spot on the pyramid. I quit the storyarc this time, no sense in completing the rest of the missions if I won't get any merits for it.